Real liquorice starts life as a root, not a flavouring, and the deep, slightly bitter, aniseed-adjacent taste people either love or can't stand comes from compounds in that root that no amount of black food colouring can fake.
From root to extract
Liquorice sweets begin with the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra, a plant in the pea family whose roots contain glycyrrhizin, a compound around fifty times sweeter than sugar and the source of liquorice's distinctive flavour. Dried root is boiled in water to draw out this extract, which is then concentrated down into a thick, dark, treacle-like block before it goes anywhere near a confectionery line.
Mixing, extruding and shaping
The concentrated root extract is blended with sugar or glucose syrup, wheat flour, and usually black treacle or molasses, which deepens the colour and adds its own flavour on top of the root. This forms a dense, pliable dough that's cooked and then forced through an extruder, a machine that pushes the dough through shaped dies under pressure, the same basic principle as pushing dough through a pasta machine. This is how liquorice gets its familiar rope, wheel, bootlace and pipe shapes, cut to length as it emerges.
- Ropes and bootlaces — extruded continuously and cut to length
- Pontefract cakes — rolled and stamped flat with a die bearing the image of Pontefract Castle
- Liquorice torpedoes and allsorts — built up in layers or blended with sugar paste and marshmallow fondant before cutting
Real root versus liquorice-flavoured
Not everything sold as liquorice contains any actual root extract. A lot of liquorice-flavoured confectionery, including much of what's sold as licorice in the United States, is really just black-coloured sugar confectionery flavoured with aniseed oil, which shares some of the same aromatic notes as real liquorice but lacks its distinctive bitter depth. Products made with genuine root extract, the kind found in our liquorice range, list liquorice extract or liquorice root itself among the ingredients, not just "liquorice flavouring".
Pontefract: England's liquorice town
Yorkshire's link to liquorice goes back to medieval monks who grew the plant locally for its medicinal uses, and by 1614 lozenges were already being pressed and stamped in Pontefract, marked with initials to prove they were made from genuine local root. The sweet as we'd recognise it today arrived in 1760, when a Pontefract apothecary named George Dunhill started adding sugar to the traditional root lozenge, stamping each one with an image of Pontefract Castle as his trademark. Demand grew so quickly through the 1800s that large areas of farmland around the town were given over to growing liquorice, cementing Pontefract's name on the sweet for good.
Frequently asked questions
What is liquorice actually made from?
Traditional liquorice sweets are made from an extract boiled out of the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra, mixed with sugar, wheat flour and treacle or molasses for colour, then extruded into ropes or stamped into shapes.
Is all black liquorice-flavoured sweet actually made with liquorice root?
No. Many liquorice-flavoured sweets, including a lot of American-style licorice, are flavoured with aniseed oil and coloured black with food colouring rather than made with real liquorice root extract, which has its own distinct, slightly bitter, earthy flavour that aniseed alone doesn't replicate.
Why is Pontefract famous for liquorice?
Liquorice root has been grown around Pontefract in Yorkshire since medieval monks cultivated it for its medicinal properties. Local lozenges were being stamped and sold there by 1614, and in 1760 a Pontefract apothecary named George Dunhill began adding sugar to the recipe, creating the sweet we now know as the Pontefract cake.